


derry, summer, 1991

by skatedaddy



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Drabble, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluffy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-28 18:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12612536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatedaddy/pseuds/skatedaddy
Summary: two pure boys and honey sweet summer





	derry, summer, 1991

**Author's Note:**

> just 2 pure boys falling in love
> 
> (timeline should put them at around 15)
> 
> i might turn this into a collection but for now i am a weak man and don't want to commit to anything. if you would want to see more of this just let me kno (':

The summer of 1991 passes by for Mike Hanlon in a hazy, golden blur. Fresh air sticks to his skin, carries in on a breeze through his open window at night, when he can smell the animals of the farm and the lazy fields that lay beyond and, on nights when the winds blew from the east, dry ocean saltwater. The days are long and time moves slow, dripping like molasses. The summer is sweet-grass green and tastes like black raspberries; the kind he spends hours packing into buckets and then slurps down with a bowl fresh cream. The weeks feel lazy and warm, but still busy, the way summers on farms tended to be. He helps his mother hang the linens out on the line, enveloped in the smell of fresh laundry and clean earth. He helps his father around the farm, baling hay, feeding the animals, planting crops. He would often wake up early in the morning, wanting to get the hardest things out of the way before the day got too hot. There was nothing fun about baling hay in 95 degree weather.

Some days Richie Tozier would come over and help him with his chores. It had been a while since the Loser’s Club had all hung out together, and as time pushed all of them forward and in different directions, Mike Hanlon found himself seeing less and less of his friends. The feelings he had for them never faded, the love remained unchanged, but it was just something that happened; people grow apart. Maybe it was a sad thing but at least Richie was still there, still around. He would show up at Mike’s farm, often unannounced, and the two would spend the entire afternoon and part of the evening together. He would help Mike with whatever chores he had in the barns or around the house and the two would head off on their bikes together, usually to the park or to the stream or to find some nice field to sit in and watch the waves of heat rise up from the ground.

Richie’s hair was longer and thicker than Mike had ever seen it, and freckles exploded out along his sunkissed nose and cheeks, what seemed like thousands of them. His eyes were powdery blue and danced playfully behind a thick and bashful set of lashes. It was hard for Mike not to be drawn in by his features, as soft and effeminate as they were. The summer is hot and milky, bathed in soft blue and yellow light, and he thinks he’s starting to fall in love with Richie Tozier. Okay, he _knows_ he’s starting to fall in love with Richie Tozier. He knows it with every ringing laugh Richie lets out, with every smile that spreads across his face, crinkling his eyes. He knows it when the setting sun in the sky bounces off Richie’s hair and makes it look like it’s made of pure radiant gold, neon gold, like he’s some kind of atomic angel (Mike does not know, at this time, that Richie felt the same way looking at Mike’s silky dark skin.) Mike Hanlon is utterly smitten.

Richie Tozier is a lavender scented, bathwater hair daydream. He’s the embodiment of summer spirit, childlike innocence, and he fills Mike with golden honey warmth. Mike can’t get enough of it. It’s hard not to get lost staring at Richie, and sometimes Richie catches him and his cheeks flush muddy red, but he never says anything. On rainy days the two sit up in Mike’s room and read comics. Sometimes Richie stretches out on the floor like a cat, but sometimes he sits right up on the narrow twin bed next to Mike, and their shoulders touch, and Mike’s heart thumps loudly in his chest and butterflies flutter around inside his stomach and up his throat. Sometimes Richie rests his head on Mike’s shoulder and Mike feels that if he were to die at that moment, at least he’d die a damn happy man.

The two have an unspoken bond, a wordless agreement to love and take care of each other. When Mike’s favorite sheep, Baabs, suddenly takes ill and has to be put down, Richie rubs Mike’s back while he cries and helps him bury her. He even says a few words in Baabs honor; _“She was a good sheep. She was always very wooley.”_ It’s ridiculous, but it’s sincere, and it makes Mike stop crying. On the few incidences where Richie shows up to the farm with a black eye and a face that’s swollen red from crying, Mike gives him an icepack for his eye and rubs his shoulders and they both pretend that Mike doesn’t know that Richie’s dad hit him. Pretending that he didn’t know what went on behind the closed doors of the Tozier house was just another part of their wordless agreement.

Some nights they take one of Mike’s old cotton sheets from the linen cabinet and spread it out on the grass of Mike’s expansive side yard. They lay down and watch the stars glint overhead while the night cools down around them, and the crickets chirp and the owls start to wake up. Summer nights with Richie always feel the best; Mike loves the way Richie lays close to him as they stare up into the cosmos, seeking out constellations with eyes that are just starting to feel sleepy. He loves how soft the long sleeved flannels Richie always wears are, and how they feel when they rub against the bare skin of Mike’s own arms, and how they smell like fresh air and July nights and cigarette smoke. He loves the way the thick ringlets of curls in Richie’s hair sometimes bounce when he turns his head, and how his two front teeth extend down a little farther than the rest, and how he’s always biting his lips. He loves the way Richie gets quiet when it’s just the two of them, laid out under the stars, because it’s one of the only times Mike actually gets to watch him get lost in thought. He wishes he knew exactly what was going through Richie’s mind as they laid still and inhaled the sweetness of the night.

Richie’s sunbaked skin seems to glow under the moonlight, smooth like silk. It’s on one of these nights, the grass under Mike’s old sheets just beginning to get damp, that Mike works up the courage to press his lips into Richie’s. It’s chaste and innocent and he’s not really sure what he’s doing, but when he pulls away Richie’s eyes are fluttered shut and his mouth is pulled up into a small smile and Mike feels elated, his stomach doing wild flips as he leans in to kiss Richie again. Richie’s hand comes up to touch the side of Mike’s face, and it’s the softest touch, the sweetest gesture, it melts Mike heart.

The summer of 1991 is a special one, one Mike will always reflect back on, even when the memory comes in soft and fuzzy, like static on a television. He will always remember falling in love with Richie Tozier, and the first kiss they shared laying out on his massive side lawn, the two of them burning bright like fallen stars in the open milky way.


End file.
